CXCIII (F III, 4)
TO APPIUS CLAUDIUS PULCHER (IN
CILICIA)
BRUNDISIUM, 5 JUNE
ON the 4th of June, being at Brundisium, I
received your letter stating that you had
instructed L. Clodius with what you wished him to
say to me. I am much looking forward to his
arrival, that I may learn at the earliest possible
moment the message he is bringing from you. My
warm feeling and readiness to serve you, though I
hope they are already known to you by many
instances, I shall yet manifest in those
circumstances above all others, in which I shall
be able to give the most decisive proof that no
one's reputation and position is dearer to me than
yours. On your side, both Q. Fabius Vergilianus
and C. Flaccus, son of Lucius, and—in
stronger terms than anyone else—M.
Octavius, son of Gneius, have shewed me that I am
highly valued by you. This I had already judged to
be the case on many grounds, but above all from
that book on Augural Law, of which, with its most
affectionate dedication, you have made me a most
delightful present. On my part, all the services
which belong to the closest relationship shall be
ever at your command. For ever since you began
feeling attachment to me, I have learnt daily to
value you more highly, and now there has been
added to that my intimacy with your
relations—for there are two of them of
different ages whom I value very highly, Cn.
Pompeius, father-in-law of your daughter, and M.
Brutus, your son-in-law 1 —and, lastly,
the membership of the same college,
especially as that has been stamped by such a
complimentary expression of your approval, 2 seems
to me to have supplied a bond of no ordinary
strength towards securing a union of feeling
between us. But I shall not only, if I come across
Clodius, write you at greater length after talking
with him, but shall also take pains myself to see
you as soon as possible. Your saying that your
motive for staying in the province was the hope of
having an interview with me, to tell you the
honest truth, is very agreeable to me.
BRUNDISIUM, 5 JUNE
